


Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair

by CanterburyTales



Series: Adoverse [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Gen, Otherworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-30 22:55:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1024359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CanterburyTales/pseuds/CanterburyTales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tale of how Loki's magic was bound by an iron bracelet about his wrist. A Celtic myth for Samhain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair

Once there was a prince who ran along strange paths he had not trod before. Many times he had clutched a crown and many times it had slipped through his fingers. Many times through his actions war had touched the Realms, and many times he had defended against attack, but he rightly thought that last would be forgotten now. And so he ran along unknown ways until he came to a fair land, and the sweet smell of the forest surrounded him. There he walked until he heard a voice singing and he turned from his path to find the singer.

“Black is the color of my true love’s hair  
His voice is soft and wondrous fair,  
The fairest face and the neatest hands,  
And I love the ground on which he stands.”

He found her in the marsh at the edge of the river, bare white feet in the mud. In one hand she had a gleaming sickle of simple iron, and at her feet was a basket made of reeds. Her face was half hidden by the hood of the grey-blue cloak she wore and her dress was creamy white. She cut the reeds, all unaware, and sang.

“I love my love as well he knows,  
And I love the ground on which he goes,  
If you no more on earth I see,  
I cannot serve you as you served me.”

A smile twisted the prince’s lips and with curl of a finger the singer rose in the air and the sickle dropped from her hand. She was tall but her feet barely touched the ground as he turned her so her eyes would be level with his. He walked close, disregarding the mud and water in which he stood. His voice was mocking and his smile as sharp as a blade.

“Were you singing of me, little one?”

“No, though your voice is fair.” Her voice was calm from beneath her hood, and the prince flicked it back from her face in irritation. To his surprise, though her face below was pale, and her lips glowed pink, above her nose and about her eyes and forehead her skin was the same blue-grey as her eyes. She was beautiful and the hair that hung about her shoulders was red as rust. She spoke again. “What is your name?”  

“My name is Loki, once and future King of Asgard,” he told her, but the singer showed no reaction, her still face gazing into his. “What is this land, and who are you?”

“This is the Otherworld and Clud is my name, though some call me Clotha and some Clutida .”  As she spoke she rose, though Loki did not will it, and her hair and pale dress floated in the air, as if she hung in water. The prince paused for a moment in surprise and then found he could not move. The water in which he stood was snaking up, rapidly binding him, covering his body to his nostrils. Clud spoke again. “Do not struggle. I will not harm you.” But the prince glared and struggled and the gleam of magic shone in his eyes.

Clud sank until her feet rested in the mud, and she picked up her sickle, and cut the strap of her reed basket. Then she turned to the prince once more. “If you struggle, child, I must bind you” Loki’s eyes looked at her with hate and his fingers twitched.

She took his right wrist and for her the water moved, allowing his arm to leave his side, palm upmost. She wrapped the reed strap about his wrist, then kissed it. He felt the warm of her lips, then cold as the waters came swirling about the strap, forming bubbles that shone like metal. Like metal they shone, and the chill told him that it was metal in earnest, replacing the green of the rushes with dull iron. At last a metal ring was about his wrist, and the magic that he had carried from childhood, the power that, even when weak, was never more than an eyelash away was closed to him.

He screamed in fury, and it was well she moved the waters from his face or he would have drowned. “You degenerate, base, ill-begotten harpy! You dare do this to me? Artless dizzy-eyed strumpet! Your magics are no match for mine. You do not know with whom you are dealing, little sodden wretch!” He screamed at her in fury, and she listened until he grew hoarse and his voice cracked and he spoke no more, and the waters had frozen about him, for his skin was blue and he was now an Ice Giant.  

She answered and her voice was gentle as ripples on pebbles. “Hush, child. I have no magic, only power over my lands and waters. Magic is alien to me, for my heart is of iron and such iron drives out magic. It is with heart iron I bind you.” And there she left him, encased in ice, and he had no words left to call after her.

The sun had risen again before she returned, two ravens flying about her. One flew and wheeled about the prince’s head, and he recognised Huginn, one of the ravens of Asgard.

“They cannot decide what to do with you, child, so for now you are bound to me.” She considered. “I have no need of a bondsman, but your Northmen carried my people to Dyflin in chains. To Dyflin was King Artgal map Dumnagual taken, far from me, and there he was killed. Your service is fair recompense.”

“They were no men of mine,” the prince whispered, but no-one heeded him. The ravens departed, one east and one west, and Clud made the waters retreat, and bade him follow. And he realised dully that magic bound him and he had no choice but to obey her. He followed Clud to a shelter of stone where she took his clothes and bid him wear new, a tunic and breeches of light-coloured homespun.

In the long days after he saw Clud’s many forms, the dancing child, the singing maiden, the aged queen in a sea-green gown. He attacked her in all guises but it did him no good. He froze her but her child’s face looked at him with ice on her lashes and said that a river was a river, even when frozen. He put on a mask of distain, but the maiden gave him so little to do that any task she offered he grasped desperately, so that he could evade his thoughts. He screamed abuse, only to see the matriarch smile, dressed in fine black cloths and bearing a staff of iron. He sat at the feet of the ancient queen as she told him tales at the seashore, and listened and schemed, and sought an opening that never came. 

The worst came when he tried to seduce her, not from want or need or love but to make an ally of her. His flattery and cajolery met the blank wall of her incomprehension. “I want to have you,” he said at last, forced into bluntness. “No,” she replied, pausing in her song, as unaffected as if he asked for some everyday thing. “Is it because I am not a king?” He thought only of the customs of which she had told him, but the old bitterness of the prince passed over was audible in his voice. She looked at him, still calm, ever calm. “If you had me you would be a king. But why would I want that and why would you?” For a long time after he turned that question over in his mind, like a smooth rock in his hands. She was once renowned, now was forgotten, yet it did not affect her. He could not understand.

Every ruse failed him, for a river can neither be tricked, nor seduced, nor swayed by words, but holds firm to its purpose. She wore him down, as a river flowing cuts deep gorges, and grinds stones smooth, and turns solid rock into sand. Finally he gave up fighting, aware it was as futile as the battle of which the queen told him on the sea-shore, of the hero who in his madness fought the horses of the sea.

 

They came again to the shelter and he knew what she would say. “You have served me well and all debts are paid. Today I release you from your bondage.”

“Where shall I go?” His voice was low.

“You will go to your brother, child. He waits for you in my land below.” She marked the shake of his head, the clench of his fist.  “Asgard wants no part of you, even bound as you are. The king sends you below and none save your brother will stand surety for you.”

He did not ask to stay, for he knew she would ask why, and he had no answer, or at least, no answer that his pride would let him say. His one desire now was to be let alone. She had washed away his illusions and he knew he did not wish to rule. His thirst for recognition still burned, but he knew he was too dangerous a thing to be left unbound. He was still a trickster, but one without his magic and one without a purpose.

His pride and shame allowed him to ask one thing of her, with one bare word. “Please,” he said as he lifted his right arm towards her, the bracelet dull against his blue skin.   

She understood, took his right wrist in her hands and kissed the bracelet gently. He felt again her lips and then a spark of power in his darkness. A spark tiny and weak, with no hint of any way to access more, but it was enough and the blue was washed away in his familiar paleness. He looked again a prince of Asgard.

He dressed in the clothes he had worn when he came, washed clean in the river and smelling of the forest. He followed her to the edge of the water, and closed his eyes, and fell to earth. 

**Author's Note:**

> This story got stuck in my head and insisted on being written. 
> 
> The Otherworld is a creation of Marvel (aka Avalon). Clud is mine. She is based on a mother goddess, the legendary source of the Clyde (the river that flows through Glasgow, Scotland), whose name means "renowned". There's not much known about her. The Viking raid she mentions actually happened, in 870AD (so before Loki was born, per the movies). In my head, she looks like Karen Gillan (I wish I had photoshop skillz). 
> 
> In Irish folklore iron can protect against magic.
> 
> The song "Black is the color of my true love's hair" [was collected in the 20th century in the Appalachian Mountains](http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=666&Title=BLACK%20IS%20THE%20COLOUR%20%282%29), but may well be of Scottish origin, because it mentions the Clyde. There are millions of versions, folk to classical to jazz, some addressing men, some women. This is mine.
> 
> ETA: [Clud artwork](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1032241) by Lymmel. Thank you!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fan Art for Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032241) by [Lymmel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lymmel/pseuds/Lymmel)




End file.
